Theodora Ann “Tidye” Pickett was born in Chicago on 3rd of November 1914, her mother Sarah was a factory clerk and her father Louis was a foundry foreman. She was never known as Theodora, always as Tidye. She had an older brother Charlie.
She would attend Englewood High School, an integrated institution at which at the time about one-third of the students were black. Although there were organised and funded sports activities within the school, Tidye shied away from those and followed her interests outside of school. Some have wondered whether she found the competition simply not stiff enough and that was why she opted for the Park District programs.
She played basketball and was a star player on some of the top African American women teams in the city. Playing for Bethesda Baptist Church team she played as a forward, was captain and was frequently the highest points scorer. In the 1932-33 season they won the league.
As a young girl she started running and found that she was pretty good at it. She was spotted by long-jumper John Brooks – who finished 2nd to Jesse Owens in the American Olympic trials for the 1936 Olympics – who offered to coach her.
Her first organized team competition was with a track team she joined that was sponsored by the Carter School Playground. She was small for an athlete at just 5 foot 2 inches (157cm) tall and weighing only 47kgs at the age of seventeen, but she had remarkable speed.
In 1929 at the Chicago American/Central AAU Athletics meet which involved 1,100 girls in age groups starting at 11-12 years, Pickett running for Carter in the 13-14 years group, came in second in the 50 yard dash. In January of 1932 she tied the 50 yard national indoor record held by Helen Filkey.
It therefore came as no surprise that at 18 years of age she took part in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic trials in Evanston, Illinois. She competed in the 100-metre dash, as it was called then, winning her heat and placing third in her semi-final; which meant that she had qualified for the final. There was no fairytale ending, in the final she placed sixth. Yet that finish was good enough. The athletes were told that the results of the 100 meters would produce six members of the team, the top three to participate in the 100 metre event and the bottom three in the 400-metre relay event.
This was no mean achievement as not only were women fighting for inclusion, but black women were even further down the pecking order. She burst upon the scene at a time when African American athletes were excluded from most amateur and professional sporting competitions involving white athletes.
Also selected was Louise Stokes, and they were the first African-American women to be selected for the Olympic Games, but it would not be a happy experience.
On the journey to Los Angeles their train stopped overnight in Denver and the athletes stayed at the Brown Palace Hotel. Here Stokes and Pickett would no longer feel a part of the team. The hotel honoured the Olympic team with a banquet. However the two African American members were not allowed to share the experience. They had to eat their meal in their room. In addition to that humiliation their room was not in the same part of the hotel, they were placed in a room near a service area on an upper floor.
Over time stories have surfaced as to what they went through. They had boarded the train to Los Angeles, where the Games were being held. They were in the sleeping car when one of their teammates woke them up by drenching them in a bucket of ice water. The person responsible for this act was none other than Babe Didrikson, the golf, basketball, and track-and-field star.
Didrikson had at the Olympic trials won five of the seven events she entered, (two of the victories were however in non-Olympic events) setting several world and Olympic records. She became a star overnight. She was not your average woman and was determined to smash down all the stereotypical views the world had about women at the time. Her actions on that train have been branded racist. Others have claimed that it was just her boyish skylarking, while those who knew her claim that this was a deliberate ploy to undermine her competitors confidence. She was certainly not low on confidence or on the best way to promote herself. In Los Angeles the 21-year-old Babe claimed she was only 19. The reason for this was that she believed her accomplishments would be more impressive if she was younger!
Whatever the reasons for the unpleasant wake-up call it understandably had a lasting impact on Stokes and Pickett. In 1984 Pickett was interviewed by two Chicago papers and was quoted as saying “there were a few athletes and team officials who did not hide their bigotry.”
While on the train there was to be another development. Evelyn Furtsch, who had tripped and fallen while battling for the lead in the 100m was now in the team. She did not qualify under the agreed rules, but at the behest of an influential team chaperone who appealed to the U.S. Olympics committee, Furtsch was placed on the team. Annette Rogers, also from Chicago had made the Olympic team as a result of her third place position in the high jump. However Rogers was also regarded as a top runner, this was also taken into account in relation to her selection.
Come the final of the women’s 4x100m Relay, and after two weeks of training in Los Angeles neither Stokes nor Pickett were selected. There has been much debate as to whether this was also racially motivated. Coach George Vreeland opting to select an all-white team. Who knows what their form was like once in Los Angeles, but the prevailing view was that their non-selection was an example of the racial attitudes of the day. They had to sit on the sidelines and watch their teammates win gold medals.
Two members of that team were Evelyn Furtsch and Annette Rogers. Later in life Pickett was to say “I knew I was better than some of them. It was politics. Politics and sports, sports and politics, they’ve always gone together.”
In Los Angeles Stokes and Pickett stayed in an attic apartment during the Olympics, separate from other team members. The two also often had to eat alone.
After the 1932 Olympic Games Pickett joined the Algonquin Athletic Club, and became its vice president. In August of 1933, now also playing Tennis and she helped form a tennis club. She continued her running career but in the winter of 1933-34 began to train and compete in hurdles. She trained for months on end in the Eighth Regiment Armory with her coach John Brooks.
While 1933 had been a disappointing year for her 1934 was to be an outstanding one. She ran the opening leg on a Chicago Park District team that set an unofficial world record of 48.6 in the 4 × 110 yard relay. At the Toronto Centennial games Pickett broke the Canadian record in the broad jump, clearing an impressive 18 feet, 1 ½ inches(5m 52cm). She also ran on the Chicago relay team that set a new Canadian record, won the 60-meter dash, and finished second in the 80-meter hurdles. Then in the last indoor meet of the season in Chicago, at the annual regimental track and field championship, Pickett set a world mark for a 40-yard dash.
Her form continued into 1935 when she teamed up with Annette Rogers, Doris Anderson, and Mary Terwilliger, and set a new world record in the 440-yard relay twice. The first record was set in Hamilton at a time of 52.2 seconds and the second in Toronto at 51.8 seconds. While her individual achievements included winning the 50-yard at both Hamilton and Toronto. She was now undoubtedly one of the top sprinters in the USA.
At the 1936 United States Olympic Trials she competed in the 80-meter hurdles, an event she had been a reserve for in 1932, and placed second and qualified for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. She had bruised her ankle when she clipped the seventh hurdle. Her form meant that she was also expected to compete in the 100-metres and the 400-metre relay in Berlin.
Of course these Games took place behind a backdrop of anti-semitism and racism. The Nazi regime was determined to show the Aryan to be the most supreme of all athletes. Debate raged as to whether the USA should participate in the Games. Interestingly much of the debate was focussed on the anti-semitic stance of the Nazi regime, and many news papers with predominantly black readership tried to remind the powers that be that this regime was also racist.There were grave concerns as to how their athletes would be treated in Germany. The hosts however were on their best behaviour when the athletes arrived.
Tidye Pickett was one of only four women competitors to have had her voyage fare to Germany sponsored, which shows just how highly she was now rated. She was scheduled to compete in the hurdles, the sprint relay, and the 100-metres, and was expected to win medals for the USA.
Pickett progressed through the heats but crashed out in the semi-finals of the hurdles, quite literally. Her trailing foot catching the second hurdle, and unlike those used in the USA it was far more stable and did not fall. She ended up injuring herself and having to be stretchered from the track. She had broken bones in her foot. Her Olympic Games were over.
Her friend Louise Stokes who had also qualified for the 1936 Olympic Games it has been said promised Tidye that she would win her a medal in the 4x400m relay team. However that opportunity was taken away from her. Arriving at the track having completed her warm up, Louise was told that she had been replaced by a white runner. Once She again she sat in the stands and watched her team with the gold medal.
Away from the track after finishing high school, in 1935 Pickett entered Illinois State Normal University, in Bloomington, Illinois. Her major was health and physical education. In her first term of her junior year, Pickett served as the student head of all women’s athletic activities. What is surprising is that at University she opted not to continue her basketball, but instead decided to play field hockey. She was also secretary of the Universities interpretative dance group.
Leading up to the 1936 Olympic Games The Defender newspaper reported that she was unemployed and needed funds to finish her last year of studies.
In 1939 she did return to playing basketball and with great success. She joined the Bivins All Stars, which was a team that had evolved from the Club Store Coeds., Pickett had joined the Coeds in 1934. The Coeds under promoter and Coach Dick Hudson were soon the top African American female team in Chicago.They then became a barnstorming pro team like the Harlem Globetrotters. When Pickett joined the team, Matthew Bivins Jr was the new sponsor, and so a new name was created, the Bivins All Stars. The team was a novelty act like the Harlem Globetrotters, and predominantly played men’s and boys teams, and often beat them.
In 1939 she married Gail Russell Eldredge, who was 13 years older than her, and came with two children from a previous marriage. They would have a child together in 1942 but the marriage would not last. She returned to school to get a degree in teaching, graduating from Pestalozzi Froebel Teachers College. She met and married one of her teaching colleagues Frank Phillips, and raised three daughters with him.
In 1956, Pickett earned an Masters degree in Education from Northern Illinois University. In September 1957, she joined the teaching staff at the Cottage Grove Elementary School in East Chicago Heights. After one year she moved to Woodlawn School in the same district to serve as the school principal. She would remain as principal of Woodlawn School for 23 years.
In later life Pickett received may awards, in 1973, Illinois State University, inducted Picket into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame. Yet possibly the one reward she would have been most proud of came in 1980, when upon her retirement from her position as principal of Woodlawn School, it was announced that the school would be renamed the Tidye A. Pickett School.
She died in Chicago Heights, Illinois, on November 17, 1986 aged 72.
Two years before her passing Los Angeles hosted the Olympic Games for the second time in 1984. Not surprisingly the media wanted to talk to Tidye about her experiences in 1932. The first African American woman to compete on an Olympic team, albeit in 1936, revealed that in 1932 it had been “hard for her to feel so patriotic.” Which must have been a dagger through the heart of America.
When asked of her legacy, Pickett told the Sun-Times, “The girls who came on later didn’t have to face the same things. They had a lot to thank us for. We took a lot for them. We really opened the door for them, but I was glad it was opened.”
Which confirms just how important it is to remember those who went before.
